3 Exercises to Help You Write Through Your Trauma
No one can explain exactly how trauma will affect your life, just as no one can tell you when trauma may alter the direction of your life. Whether it is immediate, or years later after, you thought you were in the clear and emerged from the thorny thicket unscathed. The truth is though, no one emerges untouched. There are always scars left behind, some more visible than others.
Writing about personal trauma is difficult. It’s exhausting. But writing through your trauma can be cathartic. It allows us, as individuals, to understand what we went through and work through how the trauma might’ve affected us.
Truth be told, this is an odd topic for me to discuss. I’m not very good at talking about myself, about my traumas. Often when I do, what I went through feels frivolous and I, in turn, feel ashamed for feeling the way I did about it. And I know this is the case for many others like myself.
Growing up, I read writers who went through what I felt were genuine traumas, whatever that meant. It wasn’t only their characters, but they themselves had been through the mill just to get one book published. Many of their lives ended in suicide. Some live, only to die of alcoholism or lung cancer. Very few made it to the end in a mostly peaceful manner. It was this defining factor, their traumas, that led me to believe that to be a great writer was to suffer some, or many, great traumas. I can only laugh about that thought now, in hindsight.
Going through great traumas in life doesn’t make you a great writer. After all, our lives are fraught with traumas now no less than the lives of those writers of the Lost Generation, or those post-WWII. What makes you a great writer is being able to recognize trauma for what it is, being able to understand it, talk about it, breathe through it before you even consider writing about it. Whether it is an intensely personal trauma or one that is less individualistic (think divorce or death), taking time for yourself before beginning to write though it is key.
So, once you’ve come to terms with your trauma and have taken the necessary time to understand it, here are three writing exercises to help you with writing through your trauma.
The States of Emotion
Take a moment to think about a particularly traumatic event in your life. It can be one that directly happened to you or a traumatic event that happened to a friend or family member that you were there to experience with them. Once you have the memory in mind, begin to describe that event in great detail. Write about how it physically affected you, how you interacted with other people or your surroundings, and anything that comes quickly to mind as you’re thinking about it, like the way the sunlight lay upon the side of a particular building, or the way the room smelled. Anything that evokes your senses, write it down. The idea here is to express your emotional state through your physical one, and it’s an idea that comes from Psychology Today. If this one interests you, they have more prompts that could help you write through your trauma.
External Pain as a Gateway
One writer I admire and return to time and again when it comes to writing about trauma is Leslie Jamison, particularly her first collection of essays The Empathy Exams. Within it, she tackles a variety of traumas, mostly through the lense of others, but always, inevitably, folds it back into herself, her shortcomings, or her experiences. She uses the external world to better understand her internal landscape.
For this exercise, consider a time that you experienced pain recently whether it be a stubbed toe, a broken bone, or even just biting your tongue or the inside of your own mouth by accident. That moment of pain shocked you, maybe brought you back to reality. But, more importantly, it likely made you realize the physicality of your own body. Use that moment of pain in mind to connect it back to a previous trauma; use it as a bridge to look back on the memory while relating it to where you are now.
Stories to the Dying
Alexander Chee wrote arguably one of the finest essay collections about trauma, both personal and shared. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is a book I urge all writer’s, particularly those still trying to find their own, to read. It’s an evocative compilation of personal insight from his years of trauma and struggle and success.
In “On Becoming an American Writer,” an essay that’s relevant for today’s politcal climate for a number of reasons, Chee talks about advice Anne Dillard, his former writing teacher, once shared with his class: “What would you read to someone who was dying?”
Chee, years later, ruminates about this piece of advice in the wake of a close friend’s death and takes it a step further: “Dying, what stories would you tell?”
So, for this exercise, consider what story you would tell if you were dying? What would you want a close friend, a significant other, a beloved family member, to know about you and your past before you’re gone?
This one is a bit more intense, but I find it to be the most consistently rewarding when it comes to writing through your traumatic experience, whatever it may be. Before we go, shake the ground to leave no stone left unturned.
About Coty Poynter
Coty Poynter is the author of two poetry books. His most recent, Delirium: Collected Poems, was published by Bowen Press. His work has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Equinox, Grub Street, and Underwood Press. He lives in Baltimore with his partner, their cat Pudge, and a hodgepodge of plants.
